You’ll never believe how much Seagate’s 8TB hard drives cost

Seagate is never satisfied with the hard drives out there and has yet again broken the mould and created a new type of HDD, saving everyone money.

This new hard drive uses Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) technology to cram even more data onto each platter of the hard drive. The 3.5-inch 8TB HDD is currently available for $260 which is about £165.

The shingled drive fits more data onto a disc but overlaying data tracks, rather than spacing them out. This is a bit like shingles on the roof of a house, hence the name. This increases capacity by 25 per cent, allowing them to stay the same size but for far less cost.

So how come this much storage is so affordable? There is a cost in the form of speed, when compared with some solid state drives on the market right now. Some SSDs can manage a whopping 550MB/s whereas these SMR drives top out at 150MB/s. That's not bad but it suggests these drives are best suited as storage backup alongside an SSD running all the operating system data.

The drives are currently being shipped out by Seagate but are not that easy to find just yet. There is a multipack on Amazon but that's a silly amount probably intended for resellers. Once they do start appearing more you'll be able to find 8TB, 6TB and 5TB options.